Sam Spence's musical legend was born in countless NFL Films highlight shows that captivated fans in a world before ESPN, and they live on for a generation that spends as much time in front of Madden NFL video games as in watching the games themselves.
Spence, the primary composer for NFL Films from the mid-1960s into the 1980s, died early Saturday in Lewisville, said his son, Kim. He was 88 and had been in ill health for several months.
His tunes – "Up She Rises," "The Over the Hill Gang," "Let's Go Big O," "The Raiders," "Pony Soldiers" and "Headcracker Suite" among hundreds he wrote for NFL Films – were composed and recorded in Munich, where Spence lived from the 1960s until moving to Texas in 2014.